No signs, no stimulus

Sep 08, 2010, 9:11 PM EDT

The Canadian Press finds that the government refused to disburse stimulus funds if the receiving jurisdiction didn’t provide the “Canada’s Economic Action Plan” signs – no matter if the project was in a remote area where nobody lived. But hey, they were just “communicating with Canadians” about the good work they were doing.

Queer blog Slap Upside the Head wonders just why it is that Exodus International – which claims to “cure” gays – gets charitable status in Canada, and looks to correct that fact.

Jack Layton says that his refusal to whip his caucus on the gun registry issue won’t divide his caucus on rural and urban lines. Huh – good luck with that. Meanwhile, the updated gun registry vote count is 151 to 149 in favour of scrapping the registry, with four NDP still not responding.

I would have also remarked more on the snarky NDP press release which castigated the Liberals for not having an ethics critic in their shadow cabinet, but it hasn’t shown up on their website, so I’ll leave it at that for the time being.

The Federal Corrections Investigator has yet again come out with criticism about the fact that corrections personnel aren’t following proper procedure, and inmates are dying as a result – as evidenced by the death of 19-year-old Ashley Smith. And yet this government is looking to increase prison populations without addressing things like program funding in prisons. And why would they, when they can simply look like they’re getting tough on crime by locking people up and throwing away the key?

And with Rob Oliphant being one of the MPs over on an official trip to Armenia at the moment, there are the usual questions raised about MP travel, and how can we allow them to do this on taxpayer dollars, and so on. Never mind that we should be funding MPs to travel to places where they can gain some useful knowledge and experience, but apparently that’s not something we do in Canada.